Methods of this type are usable in particular in detection and imaging systems, such as, for example, sonar systems, radars, echographs, adaptive optics imaging systems, etc. for the purposes of medical imaging, therapeutic treatment, non-destructive testing of materials, in seismology and subsoil imaging, etc.
Such known methods suffer from having major implementation difficulties when the medium is an aberrating medium, in particular due to it being heterogeneous, because it is then difficult to focus the waves effectively whether in emission or in reception.
Various methods have already been proposed for correcting the distortions introduced by the heterogeneities of the medium under imaging. Some of those methods are based on the use of a (reflective) bright point in the focusing zone that makes it possible to correct the distortions—see, in particular Prada et al. [“The iterative time reversal process: A solution to self-focusing in the pulse echo mode”, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 90, 1119-1129, 1991].
In the more general case, unfortunately such a shiny spot is unavailable. Therefore, methods have been developed by Mallart et al. [“The van Cittert-Zernike theorem in pulse echo measurements”, J. Acoustical Soc. Am., Vol 90, Issue 5, pp. 2718-2727, 1991] for using the coherence of the waves backscattered by the medium, but the lack of robustness of those methods prevents them from being implemented industrially.